Rani of Jhansi

Book excerpt: The brave woman, Maharani Lakshmibai, is a grand personality and inspiring chapter of Indian history. Even today her name inspires a new zeal in the hearts of all those who are struggling against injustice and cruelties. Her life was a strange combination of rise and fall. A seven-year-old innocuous madonna, the daughter of Moropant Tambe, a very ordinary common man, by quirk of circumstances, became the queen of nearly middle aged Raja Gangadhar Rao?Maharani Lakshmibai. She became a widow at the tender age of nineteen years. And from here began her life of struggles. At the time of merger of her state in the British empire, she thundered, ?I?ll not give my Jhansi.